


Unfinished Collection

by Mourwen



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender, Bleach, Dragon Age - All Media Types, Final Fantasy X, Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening, One Piece, Teen Titans (Animated Series)
Genre: Gen, Not a Crossover, Self-Insert, Work In Progress, heavy on the In Progress and light on the Work
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-11
Updated: 2018-11-11
Packaged: 2019-08-22 07:56:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 14,999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16593890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mourwen/pseuds/Mourwen
Summary: I have eleven (11) self-insert fanfics rattling around in my head, but these seven (not including Fulcrum Effect) are the ones that have stuff written down. It's been over a year since I updated Fulcrum Effect and I felt bad, so I hope you enjoy this in the mean time. I will probably add to it in the future. Maybe more feedback will help me find the fire again?Here there be:1. One Piece one-shot2. Fire Emblem: Awakening3. Teen Titans (2003 animated series)4. Bleach5. Avatar: The Last Airbender6. Dragon Age7. Final Fantasy X





	1. Fall Into: One Piece

**Author's Note:**

> I've edited the descriptions and the titles because I wrote them while incredibly sleep-deprived, and I like these new ones better.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> One of the more recent fanfic ideas. I woke up with an idea for a One Piece one-shot in which the insert-character only wants to Go Home Without Getting Involved.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I included my false starts, partly because they give you an idea of my thought process and partly because I'm lazy.

**Attempt 1**  
I was totally unprepared for the wave to sweep over me, so it follows that I'd have to splutter to keep from inhaling too much. Unfortunately, I couldn't keep it from shooting up my nose.

 

 **Attempt 2**  
The wave swept over her too quickly after the previous one for her to

  

 **Attempt 3**  
The wave that swept her under had come too quickly on the heels of the previous one for her to be braced against it. She had not been able to get a good enough breath, hadn't been able to close her eyes before it hit. When she surfaced again, her lungs burned, her eyes stung fiercely, and her vision was blurred – blurrier than before, anyway; she'd lost her glasses when the boat had gone down.

She spluttered, trying to keep her head above water, cursing herself and her friends for foolishly not packing enough life vests, and only just managed to take a breath this time before the wave crashed over her. Her breathing was becoming more ragged, and she couldn't see well enough to determine where anyone was.

  

 **Attempt 4**  
The water was salty. It stung my eyes, making my sight more blurry than even the loss of my glasses had. It burned my nose, made my breathing ragged and painful in my throat, and made me splutter and cough.

Here's the thing: I went boating on a land-locked freshwater lake. The water couldn't have been salty. But it was.

Like a particular kind of idiot, I had not worn a life vest on the boat, since there had not been enough for all of us. Still, it should not have been so hard to keep my head in the air, since the lake was generally placid and did not have such wild waves as I had been dunked by. When I finally managed to get my head above the surface for a more substantial length of time than a frantic gasp of air, I was greeted with the indistinct sight of a shipwreck. Instead of the small motorboat I had been on moments before, I found myself furiously treading water just outside of the undertow caused by a sinking sail ship. It looked like it had been cracked in two like an egg by some enormous blow. And, again like an egg, its contents had spilled out, filling the waves with people and cargo and whatever else is kept on ships.

I flailed about with quickly-tiring arms, trying to reach one of the nearer pieces of flotsam to use as a buoy. With a chunk of some plank or other under my arms, I could spend more energy on trying to figure out where the ever-loving heck I was.

As I squinted around, I realised there were actually two ships. One was clearly done for, with just its bow visible and sinking fast, but the other seemed to have only a broken main mast and a couple of holes above the waterline. There were people trying to climb its sides, and other people on board who were either hauling them up or shoving them back into the water. I was far enough away that I couldn't hear exactly what they were all yelling, but it wasn't hard to guess that the people being repelled didn't belong to the crew of the surviving ship.

I also discovered that I couldn't see land anywhere close enough that my near-sighted eyes could discern. Which meant if I didn't somehow convince the crew of the surviving ship to take me on board, I was probably going to drown. But considering the fact that the scene put me in mind of naval battles from movies like _Pirates of the Caribbean_ , and the dead ship's crew were not being accepted, I did not have a lot of confidence in my chances.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As you can see, I don't even know if I want to write this in first person or not. Thoughts?


	2. Fall Into: Fire Emblem Awakening

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Number Two: Fire Emblem Awakening. There is a full first chapter for this. I read a really amazing FEA SI fic on FFNet where the insert-character has "save points" and was seized by the idea of "What if 'All You Need Is Kill'/'Edge of Tomorrow' but FEA?" Thus, the title, 'Edge of Awakening'.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one has liberal swearing, because I wrote the first 500 words or so while on a rage high. Also, it contains a lot of violence, panic attacks, and dissociation, if that's of relevance to anybody's decision to read.

 

**Fic Title: Edge of Awakening**

**Note: Song on repeat while writing is _Legends Never Die_ ft. Against The Current** 

Shitfuckingdammit

These things usually start with waking up somewhere odd, don't they? Not this time.

No, I couldn't get a good rest and then have the shit hit the fan afterwards, could I? I had to get catapulted into the dumpster fire after a scant four hours of sleep (thanks to a panic attack that lasted all day and most of the night) and a bloody final exam that I'm pretty sure I failed catastrophically. At least it doesn't matter now. Does it? _Does_ it?

But I digress.

I was driving back to my shoddy little overpriced apartment on the edge of town during the middle of rush hour traffic. Admittedly, driving was a bad idea, and not only for the timing of it; I was delirious with a fever of over 100 degrees and definitely should have tried to reschedule, or at least take the Godforsaken bus. But thanks to the fever and my impaired judgment therefore, I didn't think of rescheduling, and trying to take the bus would have ended with me late and locked out.

Pro tip: don't drive when you're delirious with fever. No matter how good an idea it seems at the time.

(Although, to be frank, I might not have survived it even if I wasn't delirious with fever. But it feels very much like the entire multiverse was out to get me, so I'm adding it to the list.)

Near the end of my drive, after surviving the harrowing trial of rush hour and making it to the less populated area, I thought I could relax a little. The light had turned green ahead of me. I took my foot off the brakes and started to ease on the gas in order to continue through it, since there was nobody stopped in my lane. The driver of the truck, who didn't see me around the corner (there was a house-turned-shop sitting really close to the road, blocking the line of sight), apparently thought he could blast through since the light had only just turned.

In the split second before my doom, I saw the glare of the truck's headlights in the corner of my eye, and jerked the wheel away from it in response. On some level, I also heard the truck's tires squeal on the road as the brakes were applied. Thanks to the delirium and stress-induced dissociation, it felt like I had a middle-of-the-theatre seat to my own demise. I watched the world outside my windshield spin; the fire hydrant, vibrant red in the setting sun, appear in my path; the sudden stop upon impact; the seat belt I'd managed to neglect to use unable to save me from being launched through the windshield; and then ?????

Pain, for one thing.

(In my forearms, since I'd somehow raised them to protect my head in time. All along my torso and legs, from hitting the steering wheel on my way out. Basically my entire body, really. How the hell did I forget my seatbelt? I’m paranoid about using it, so what the fuck?!)

Darkness for another.

(Had I blacked out and lost time from the head-rattling? I didn't think I'd hurt if I was dead, so what else could it be?)

After a haze of indeterminate time, my eyes began to perceive the world again. There was darkness, yes (like night time, so maybe I _had_ lost time?), but there were also bright lights in my blurry vision, coloured all sorts of reds, blue, and white.

They were _not_ emergency vehicle lights. The red lit up what I thought was the sky above blackness (distant houses, trees?) and directly above me was a huge blue-glowing globe surrounded by a white halo. Shapes moved against them, shadows in my unfocused gaze. I couldn't seem to move much beyond the odd lazy blink, and just lay where I'd landed, dazed.

Then the ringing in my ears began to fade (oh, my ears were ringing?), replaced by shouts and groans, the tattoo of galloping hoofbeats, and the clash of metal on metal. My surroundings came into focus slowly: a battlefield in a clearing, bounded on three sides by a raging forest fire, and lit by a massive glowing blue eye hanging low in the sky right. Over. My. Head.

For the undefined moment of relative peace inside my skull before it all really clicked together, I thought to myself that this whole thing seemed strangely familiar.

My stupor was broken when one of those shadowy shapes tried to split me in half with an axe longer than my arm. I only rolled out of the way in time thanks to the adrenalin suddenly rushing back. The axe blade _thunked_ into the turf, centimetres from my back. I felt the vibrations through the ground. Felt the weapon tug the sod up along with it. Watched the red-eyed grey zombie raise it above its head for another blow.

An arrow struck it in the throat when its arm was at the apex of its swing. Foul, inky mist poured out of the wound. When it opened its slash of a mouth (to yell? Why? Could it feel pain?), the same mist dripped from it like black dry ice smoke.

I may have screamed. The zombie tried to kill me again. I was able to get out of its ponderous way, thanks to whoever shot it.

Shouting and hoofbeats began to come my way. I whipped around to see people in medieval armour; one on a horse with a lance, one on foot with a bow in hand. I felt rather than heard the axe-zombie begin to move for me again. It tried to hit me with a horizontal swipe. I almost didn’t stumble away in time. Another arrow sprouted from its bare chest (oddly, it had only one shoulder-piece for armour). The horseman’s lance speared it directly afterward, the momentum of the horse’s charge throwing it into the air.

The spectacle of the zombie dissolving into that black dry ice smoke from the wound outward as it sailed through the burning sky had me staring dumbly. It was distracting enough that I didn’t realise the archer had approached me until he touched my shoulder. I may have shrieked again. I definitely grabbed his hand and twisted it up behind his back before I could think properly.

He yelped and started talking very fast in what sounded like complete gibberish. I was surprised again, by my own reaction as well as my inability to understand him. It had the distinct sound of a plea, though, so I figured he’d meant no harm. I let him go with nerveless fingers, and he took a step away before turning to face me, rubbing his shoulder. His continued unintelligible speech seemed slightly flustered this time, before he puffed out his chest a bit and launched into some soliloquy. Probably about himself, if I was guessing his type right.

The horseman – woops, horse _woman_ – interrupted by shouting harshly, and gestured at the bowman, then at me. I was beginning to fear that I had one of those concussions that made language difficult.

“Sorry, I have no idea what you’re saying,” I told them. I sounded fine to myself, but given their reactions were to look shocked, I may have sounded just as bad to them as they did to me. And I couldn’t tell if that was because of actual language difference or head trauma.

More shouting got all our attention. Across the field, another horseman (horseperson? Rider? Was I being sexist?) and three people on foot cut down another of the smoke-zombies and hastened over.

Groans and stamping of feet alerted us to the shambling advance of more zombies. The biggest one, near the rear, groaned louder than the rest.

One of the new arrivals on foot started barking orders (or so I assumed) in a strong tone. The horsewoman grabbed the back of my shirt like I was a recalcitrant kitten and plopped me in front of her on her horse. Then all seven of us were dashing toward the edge of the field, where a great hulking building-shadow squatted. It was an old stone keep, enclosed in crumbling walls. The forest seemed to be trying to reclaim it, but it was still sturdy. I wondered how long it had been there, abandoned.

That feeling of familiarity rose up again. Before I could grasp it fully, I was being tossed off the horse and through the doorless doorway. Someone in a hoop dress, of all things, followed me in and helped me up.

The archer moved to one of the arrow loops beside the doorway. The barking one stood at the other. A person in a cape set their feet just before the empty door frame, a huge shining sword in hand. The riders were positioned just inside the walls where they yet stood taller than a person on horseback.

As the horde entered line of sight through the remains of the gate, the barking one called out in a cautioning tone of voice. Everyone tensed, so I figured they’d said something like “Not yet,” or “Wait for it.” They waited like cats preparing to pounce. The first zombies were just about to step through the gate when the barking one called out again. The horses sprung forward (these were horses trained for fighting. Warhorses), their riders’ lances flashing in the light of the fire and the glowing eye. The front line of zombies staggered, and one went down, dissipating before it hit the ground. More came on, and the riders retreated before they could be overwhelmed.

Which meant the horde came on toward the keep.

For the first precious seconds, I couldn’t comprehend what was happening. There was the flashing of the bright sword. There was the soft _thung_ of the archer’s bowstring. There was a sharp flare of yellow-white light that left afterimages of stark shadows on my vision, and an accompanying _CRACK!_ (what the fuuuuuckkkk was going on?). At someone’s cry of pain, the person in the hoop skirt pointed with a staff topped with a sphere – and the sphere began to glow, limning the swordsman in similar green-blue light.

(No, for real. What the _fuck_ was happening.)

I found myself backing up from the chaos. I backed right on up into a weapons rack, tripped and fell, and a long, heavy pole dropped on my head; in the meagre lighting, I saw that it was a spear. Though the spearhead was dark with what I hoped was only rust, I gripped the haft in numb hands and shoved myself to my feet.

At that particular moment, the swordsman was knocked back. With the primary defender down, one of the mist zombies made for the hoop skirt-person, who was closest to the swordsman and armed only with the staff.

There were no thoughts in my head. I can’t claim to have found my courage then, or any sort of heroic and high fantasy-level bullshit. If I could transcribe what I felt, it would require a wall of nothing but exclamation points. I was dissociating hard, and found myself simply _acting_.

Like an idiot, I charged the mist zombie, holding the spear point-first. It was only due to this creature having little in the way of brains that I managed to catch it off guard and stick it in the chest. Its sword came down not on the hoop skirt-person, but on the spear haft where my hand gripped it, and I’m pretty sure I lost fingers (I couldn’t actually tell – it was too dark, I had more adrenalin than blood in my veins, and I was still dissociating, so all I knew was _pain_ ). My half-assed charge didn’t drive it back, but it was stuck on the end of the spear, now, and blocked its buddies from entering.

If the swordsman hadn’t gotten up at that point and delivered the killing blow (dissolving blow?), we’d have all been in Big Trouble™ because I had acted with literally no thought.

The hoop skirt-person was then helping me sit down (more like she controlled my collapse so I didn’t just slump), and babbling at me in whateverese. I noticed, in a distant sort of way, that she looked worried.

I don’t know if I fainted then, or what, but after some amount of time, I realised my eyes were open, and I was looking at the swordsman. He was crouched in front of me, eyes wide in concern (boy, did he look _young_ , then) and speaking in an earnest tone. He held out his right hand to me, which was bare to the shoulder. In the dim light, I could make out some sort of tattoo, like a fancy teardrop. Looking at it started that tickle in my brain again, the one that told me this was all very familiar and I should know what it was.

The barking one had knelt down and was saying something, too, but at the end of it, he turned his (equally familiar) pale-haired head to the swordsman.

And called him _Chrom_.

(No! You’ve gotta be shitting me!)

My gaze moved from their tired, wry smiles to the tattoo(???) so fast that it felt like my eyes tried to launch out of their sockets. I tried to rationalise. I tried to convince myself I was hearing things. Or that I was having some sort of hallucination caused by the traumatic brain injury. But the fancy teardrop shape didn’t change, didn’t waver, didn’t blur. Even in the poor light, I couldn’t mistake that mark now.

The Brand of the Exalt.

 _Shit_. _Shit damn fucking hell_. “No!” I may have yelled that. I’m not sure. “This isn’t real! That’s impossible!”

It certainly got all eyes on me. Including one person standing at the edge of the group surrounding me, who wore a cape and a mask (well, their face was turned towards me, so I assumed they were looking too). When my gaze locked on the dark eyeholes of the mask and didn’t stray, the rest of the group noticed their presence and decided the mystery of the screaming woman (me) was less interesting than the masked swordsperson.

The bearer of the Brand stood and spoke to them. The barki- the Avatar helped me to stand, too, as the group all faced the other stranger.

I remembered from the game that their exchange was supposed to be brief, serving only to raise more questions and propelling the storyline further. I did not remember there being any more zom- _Risen_ around for it. So when a Risen rose up at the old keep’s gate behind Marth-Lucina, arrow on its bowstring, already loosing as the others were only just beginning to react, I should have been too shocked to be able to do anything.

But here’s the thing: I was already in shock, and also still dissociating.

There was no room in my brain for the process of recognising danger, deciding on an action, and acting. And so there was no delay between me noticing the danger and taking action.

I shoved past Chrom and Lissa, knocking them aside. The arrow flew through the air. My hands (the left missing three fingers) snagged Lucina, my foot shoved against hers to destabilise her as I settled my stance. I spun us around, taking her place. Somehow, I was fast enough.

 _Agony_. I’d have screamed, if I’d had the breath.

Lucina’s grip on my arms was all that stopped me from collapsing. I tried to inhale, but the pain made everything spasm around the arrow, and my body reflexively tried to breathe, until it was an endless cycle of movement and pain. Blood filled my mouth and throat, splattering Lucina’s clothes when I coughed, like some goddamned anime scene.

Someone must have taken care of the last Risen, and I think Lissa was fluttering around me, trying to help, but Lucina didn’t look up to watch, didn’t even look up to acknowledge her aunt. Her eyes, shadowed by the mask but now visible to me, were locked on mine. They were widened in horror, and her mouth was open in silent denial. I think she knew there was no way for even magic to save me. I swear I could _feel_ my heart flutter against the shaft of the arrow in my chest. I wished I had the wherewithal to give her a smile, or tell her I was sorry, or something; all I could do was gasp like a fish out of water.

As darkness crept into my vision, Lucina seemed to find her voice. Something like despair made it hoarse and quiet, but she said, clearly and _distinctly in English_ , “No! You can’t die, Aunt Ari!”

(What.)

Everything went dark, then, and I felt like I was falling.

In fact, I _was_ falling. I realised this when I hit the ground and got the wind knocked out of me.

When I opened my eyes, the glaring light of the huge blue eye made me squint painfully. This just added to the pain in the rest of my body, but it was _nowhere near_ the agony of the arrow that should have killed me.

With a mind still detached from dissociation, I reached up to pat my chest, where I was sure the arrow should be. But no arrow head protruded from my breast, and when I lifted my hands, there was no blood on them. Actually, while looking at my hands, I felt that something was off. Didn’t I lose fingers on my left hand? And yet there they were, in all their crooked glory, whole and undamaged.

(What the fuck.)

The loud, ponderous footsteps, combined with the drawn-out groan had me looking up at the Risen axeman standing over me, weapon raised to strike. I found I couldn’t move.

An arrow sprouted from its throat like some miraculous, horrific flower, and black fog leaked out of the wound, and the creature’s open mouth.

(What is this, a recurring nightmare?)

The axe came down.

I still couldn’t move.

The pain was all-encompassing.

And then I was falling again.

This time, when I caught my breath and my eyes adjusted, I had to face a terrifying fact.

Bestial groans and rousing shouts filled the air, along with the drum of hooves on the ground, and the unmistakable _crash-screech_ of weapons. The meadow around me was lit by the eye – the portal through time – and backlit by a raging forest fire. A shadowy figure began to move toward me where I sat gawking, brandishing an axe. I was back at the beginning of this mess, launched-through-windshield momentum and all. Which meant that either something had sent me back to this point _before_ I died…

… or I only came back _after_ dying.

Fuck.

 

  **Chapter End**

 

  **Chapter 2**

I didn’t make it as far as my first run. (Round? Run? Loop? What should I call this nightmare?) It was probably a fluke that I had, that first time.

The archer – Virion, that dandy – shot the Risen about to bisect me, but it didn’t give the brute near as much pause as the previous two times. Or maybe I was still in shock and too detached to be able to keep moving though my dissociation, and it only _seemed_ that way?

Whichever it might have been, the result was the same: I got an axe to the face.

The strange transition from pain beyond description to general ache, and falling through darkness onto unforgiving ground was no less disorienting the fourth time.

As I gathered my wits and my breath after landing for a fourth time on the hard, dark ground, the only thought I could hold onto was _Get The Fuck Out_. There was only so much pain and terror I could take. (Weakling. Coward. _Useless_.)

The Risen axeman – barbarian? Fighter? Fuck it – came at me. I scuttled back on my ass, crabwalk style. The arrow struck it, and I took the opportunity of its distraction to turn around. Instead of standing up and potentially getting mistaken for a Risen, I scrambled away on my hands and feet, like I once had run as a child, pretending to be a dog (how incongruous, the nostalgia of the action with the fear of the moment).

My desperate galumphing was aimed at the old fort, if I could find it in the chaos. There was no way I was gonna be able to outrun a horde of unliving creatures that could put the original persistence hunters to shame.

Miraculously, I made it.

Unsurprisingly, I still died.

This time, a Risen managed to reach the fort before the Heroes even started making for it. It probably followed me right there, actually, which says something about my luck that I’d rather not consider. (To be honest, the fact that I was even experiencing this said things about my luck.)

It took me several tries to survive the game’s first encounter with the Risen. I’m not even counting the ones where I was just so fucking tired of trying that I sorta fell into a stupor and died to the Risen’s axe like a video on repeat.

 

 

  **Notes on thought process to Not Forget:**

I had always known myself to be weak. Maybe later, if I survived and reached “later”, I’d be disappointed at just how weak that had turned out to be.

 

I was never so thankful for my weird childhood, running around on my hands and feet to imitate a dog, as that moment. That low to the ground, I wasn’t at risk of being mistaken for another Risen and shot.


	3. Fall Into: Teen Titans

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> By "Teen Titans" I mean the animated series that started in 2003. I'm a filthy casual at a lot of things, and that includes fandom. Sorry, not sorry.
> 
> I actually don't have a plot for this one yet, which is probably why it stalled. The idea is that the insert-character has near-omnipotence, but at a huge cost. Beyond that, I think I was just gonna literally take a few episodes of the show and paste her in.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again, swearing. Also guns, and sort of kidnapping?

Usually, when I wake up, it’s as easy as breathing; I don’t really know I’m doing it, but it gets done all the same. Also, generally, it happens in the same place I fell asleep, give or take some minor position changes. First instinct is to look for the time, to see if I can’t catch a few more winks before the alarm, if that wasn’t what triggered the waking process. Maybe groan and grumble to my cats about getting up.

This time was different.

This time, I opened my eyes in the process of jumping to my feet, instantly awake. And furious.

“You can’t do this to m–!” I yelled, hands like claws, reaching for the blue bastard’s throat.

Just because my eyes were open didn’t mean they were really processing, apparently. But they caught up real fast, and then I regretted… a lot of things.

I was standing in the middle of a bank, a main location-type deal, with dark wood accents, slate-tile floors, marble countertops, and gunmen in masks holding the place up.

The people on the floor with their hands on their heads, the tellers shoving cash at the robbers, and the ski masked-men themselves all looked at me like I was crazy. I couldn’t say I blamed them.

I felt heat rise in my face. “Uh. Woops?”

“Think you’re funny, kid?” demanded the closest robber, bringing the big gun’s muzzle level with my chest. I turned my claw-hands into surrender-hands right away, but he continued, coming closer. “Guess you just volunteered to come along as some _extra_ insurance.”

_Don’t do it don’t do it don’t do –_

“Really? That’s what you’re going with?” I wrinkled my nose. “You can’t just say ‘hostage’ and be good?”

“You smarmy brat!”

Okay, so maybe I wasn’t totally awake. I usually have more inhibitions.

The gunman was close enough that he could whack me with the butt of his weapon, and that’s exactly what he made to do. Only I caught it, without a thought, and ripped it out of his grip, then turned it around to point at him. My hands continued to work, sans conscious command, and next thing I knew, I was dropping the components of the gun to my feet. All before the other two could think to turn their weapons on me.

“What the –”

But apparently my body wasn’t done. I grabbed the suddenly-not-gunman by the collar and threw him at his buddies, half the room away, _with one hand_. They went sprawling, a tangle of arms, legs, and weapons.

I tensed, preparing for – something, I don’t know, but whatever it was, it wasn’t what I got. I was _not_ expecting the decorative metal scrollwork on the tellers’ counters to suddenly glow _black_ and coil around the unhappy trio like snakes.

“It’s the Teen Titans!”

“Oh, thank goodness!”

“… couldn’t have gotten here sooner?”

The clamour of the crowd, as they got to their feet and all started talking at once, became white noise after that first shout. _No, no, no, I thought you were kidding me, you’ve got to be kidding me, please be kidding me, you can’t do this to me!_

“That was some quick work,” said a young male voice behind me, coming from the direction of the bank’s main doors.

Turning slowly, without releasing the tension in my body, I faced them. I’m not sure what _I_ looked like – my face was numb, my heart was pounding in my ears, and I felt like I couldn’t breathe – but _they_ looked exactly the way I expected them to. Except, you know, real.

“Sorry for butting in, but it looked like you might need a hand,” Robin was saying.

_Quick! Think of something cool!_

“… sure thing,” I forced out of a constricted throat.

_That’s it? That’s all you can say? After mouthing off to the bad guys, this is the first thing you come up with when faced with your favourite superhero team?_

“Dude!” yelled Beast Boy, suddenly in my face. I flinched and tried to back up, a hand raised to ward him off, but he grabbed it like I was offering to shake. “That was so cool! The way you disassembled that gun so fast! You’re, like, as fast as Robin!”

“And that throw!” Now there was a very excited Starfire right next to me, taking my other hand and squeezing it. I squeezed back, reflexively, and it turned into a contest of strength, despite her continued eye-blinding smile. _Ow ow ow_. “Your form could use some work, but it was well done!”

“Hey, that’s _great_ , can I have my hands back please?”

 

**Note For Continue**

Blah blah, Raven and/or Cyborg (probably Cy, actually) step in and save my character from further manglement and then there is a minor interrogation about her, as an apparent metahuman who’s new to Jump City, somehow they wind up at Titan Tower, and my character has situational whiplash.

 

 

  **A Glance At Before She Wakes Up In The Bank**

“Listen, buddy, I don’t think you’ve got the right person for this,” I pointed one finger at him rudely, then gestured at myself. “I identify with Tolkien’s stereotypical hobbits for a reason. I prefer to read about adventures, not go on them myself!”

“Was your attendance at a school so far from home, commuting daily for three hours, to a disreputable part of that city just to learn of culinary arts not an adventure?”

“Uh, well –”

“Was your family’s week-long roadtrip to the neighbouring country to enjoy the ocean for the first time not an adventure?”

“Look, that’s not –”

“Then I suppose choosing to finally find a place of your own, apart from all you were familiar with, and distant from your preferred support system was also not an adventure.”

“Yes! Fine! They were adventures!” I threw my hands in the air in frustration. “But they weren’t on the level of crazy that you’re proposing!”

“And yet in all the permutations of my reality into which you are placed, you handle yourself admirably, if not commendably.”

“That means basically nothing, dude. A worm that manages to escape a robin by random circumstance and manages to pass on its genes could be said to have ‘handled itself admirably.’”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you can guess whom I mean by "blue bastard", you get a virtual cookie and the knowledge that you've made me grin like a maniac.


	4. Fall Into: Bleach

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The premise: Aizen, while experimenting with the infant Hōgyoku, accidentally pulls a living soul from another dimension across the boundaries between, simultaneously killing her, making her the most powerful being in the Bleach dimension, and Hollowfying her. Because I wanted to see if I could write an interesting story with an all-powerful character. This came before the Teen Titans one, in terms of when I started writing them, and the challenge to myself bled over a bit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I generally find it really hard to get into other characters' mindsets. Luckily, Ichigo is an anomaly.

When I was young, I was diagnosed with severe depression. By the time it was recognised, I had come to the edge of a precipice, and was considering the ways I could descend with as little pain as possible. I was rescued from that choice, and spent the next decade dragging myself back from it.

But I spent so much time longing for death (or at least a cessation of this torture called being) during that period that I think I came to see it as more of an old friend than as something to be feared. All the years of my “recovery” could never change that.

So when death came for me, I faced it - despite all my regrets and all my sorrows for the people I’d leave behind and the things I hadn't finished - with a heart full of acceptance, if not peace.

If I had known... well. I didn’t.

There is nothing inside. The void of it threatens to collapse the fragile chassis, implode the delicate bones and paperlike skin, which creaks under the pressure, perpetually on the verge of giving in but never quite brittle enough.

The pain of this existence is all that’s left. I am only agony, now. An empty husk.

A Hollow.

 

**The first part of the fic begins at Chapter 49 of the _Bleach_ manga**

The Gillian Menos Grande was retreating. Kurosaki Ichigo’s recklessness had born fruit.

Then there was another scary moment where his Reiatsu went wild, and Ishida Uryuu had to step in. It led to an understanding between them, and Urahara watched with a pleased air.

Tessai and Ururu jogged past him, heading for the Garganta.

“I’ll leave that crack in the sky for you to fix!” he told them as he turned away from the scene, no longer the serious person who had bound Rukia with a Kidō spell.

“No problem!”

The sudden increase in Reiatsu once again emanating from the Garganta’s jagged jaws had him spinning back around. Everyone faced the black tear, tense.

A screech shook the earth, and the Gillian stumbled out of the Garganta… _dissolving_.

Cries of fear, and then of surprise went up.

Uryuu shouted, “What – what could kill that monster so easily?!”

A grimness settled around Urahara. Tessai tried to get his attention with a gruff, “Boss!” but neither could really take their eyes away from the fast-fading remains of the Gillian. Within seconds it was completely gone, and then Urahara and Tessai used Shunpo to put themselves between the Garganta and the others, one gripping his cane in a white-knuckled hand, the other taking up a Hakuda stance. They ignored Ichigo’s yelling, and waited.

A figure stepped into view, just inside the Garganta, and the Reiatsu spiked higher, oppressive and suffocating. Of them all, Ichigo merely looked winded. Jinta, Ururu, and Rukia seemed to be having more trouble breathing, and sweat broke out on their temples. Uryuu, though, appeared to be fighting to keep his lunch down.

The set of Urahara’s shoulders stiffened further, if that was possible. Tessai released a slow breath.

The Vasto Lorde looked like a young human woman with long, black hair. She wore a ragged grey cloak wrapped around her like a primitive yukata in a way that exposed the hole through her chest, and _she had no mask_. A jagged ridge of what looked like the remnants of her Hollow mask encircled her left eye. A tantō was thrust through the sash of her yukata.

As her gaze swept over them, everyone stilled. And then her unblinking eyes fell on Urahara and stopped.

The Vasto Lorde finally blinked. Then she smirked.

She lifted a hand – everyone tensed – and… blew him a kiss? _Were those roses blooming around her like some ridiculous anime?_

Then she drew the sides of the Garganta together like a curtain, and the horrible Reiatsu was gone.

The hush continued, everyone frozen, still holding their breath. Then:

“WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?!”

“Kurosaki-san!” Uryuu admonished.

“A Vasto Lorde,” said Urahara quietly. He waited for the boys to quiet down before he faced them, joking persona back in place. “The highest level of Menos, more powerful than any other Hollow. It’s thought that only a handful exist!”

That had them stuttering for a moment.

“Why did she blow a kiss at you? Do you know her?” Ichigo demanded loudly.

Urahara laughed and swiftly flicked his fan in front of his face, tone light as he said, “I’ve never met a Vasto Lorde! Most people who do tend not to survive the encounter, you know! Maybe she’s heard of me? Ooh, I’ve got a fan!”

Ichigo and Uryuu both began muttering and ignoring him. But Rukia was still staring at the place where the Garganta had split the sky.

After a moment, Urahara also turned to look there, a grave expression on his face, still hidden behind his fan.

(End note: under the sky that the Garganta had split, a red rose blossom lay, as fresh as if it had just been plucked, and radiating pure Reishi. Urahara had no idea what to make of it, but took it back to his shop anyway.)

 

Just over twenty-four hours later, as Ichigo was heading home from school, he saw her again. She was exiting a grocery store that Yuzu liked to frequent, since it generally had good sales, and she was carrying a plastic bag. There was no sign of the previous day’s overwhelming Reiatsu, and she was dressed like a normal, modern young adult in a white button-down blouse and a pair of black slacks. Except for the black-feathered monocle on her left eye, and the black lace umbrella – parasol? – that was hooked around her wrist, despite there being not a cloud in the sky.

Most confusing was that other people could see her.

He couldn’t help exclaiming, “YOU?!”

She looked over her shoulder at him, and apparently upon recognising him, stopped and turned to face him. “Yes?” she said, her voice somewhat rough, as though from disuse.

“Aren’t you that Vasto Lorde chick? What are you doing here? How come people can see you?” challenged Ichigo.

“I’m grocery shopping.”

“Are you serious!”

“Yes, we were out of milk and eggs, and I wanted to bake a cake.”

“That is not what I was asking!”

“Perhaps you should be more specific, then,” she responded blandly. Her expression had not changed at all during this exchange; her voice had remained at a monotone.

Ichigo took a deep breath, as though to calm himself. “Why are you, a Hollow, shopping at a human grocery store, and why can people see you?” he enunciated clearly, a twitch in his right eye.

“Hueco Mundo doesn’t have grocery stores, or I wouldn’t bother to make this trip. And,” She leaned a little closer, as though to whisper something, but then continued in the same even voice, “it’s a secret~.”

“Right,” said Ichigo, making an exasperated face. “I don’t know why I asked.”

The strange Hollow woman seemed to take this as the end of the conversation, since she turned and began walking away. After a moment’s pause, Ichigo also started walking – in the same direction.

They passed a couple of blocks in silence, until:

“Are you following me?”

“No!” Ichigo said, a little too loudly, a little too defiantly.

The Hollow woman looked over her shoulder to pin him with one eye as they walked, and he didn’t need to face her head on to recognise the You-Wanna-Try-That-Again? Look.

“Che!” Ichigo looked away first. “So what if I am?”

“Look, kid, I’m only here for these,” She lifted the bag of eggs and milk. “Can’t you let me do that in peace?”

“How can I trust that you’re telling the truth?” The signature scowl on his face deepened. “You’re a Hollow – aren’t you supposed to be a ravenous soul-devourer?”

“I should be, but I’m not.”

“And why is that?”

“Because I eat the cakes I make.”

“That makes no sense!”

The Hollow woman turned down a narrow side street and Ichigo glanced around, seeming to take in the lack of other people for the first time. He stopped walking, letting the Hollow woman continue alone.

She lifted her free hand and made a downward slashing motion, and a small Garganta opened at the gesture. She paused just outside of it, and something seemed to be dissipating from around her, like mist. Ichigo started, watching as her modern clothes and human appearance was replaced by the Hollow one he’d seen yesterday, though the tantō was hanging from a cord around her wrist where the umbrella had been instead of at her waist. Notably, there was still no trace of her terrible Reiatsu.

As the last wisps of her disguise, whatever it had been, melted away from her feathered monocle to reveal the white remnant of her Hollow mask around her eye, she turned to face him.

“Tell you what: I’ll show you what I mean about the cakes.”

Then she gave him a very small smile and stepped through the Garganta, closing it after her like a shōji door.

(End note: this is the night that Rukia is taken back to Soul Society by Abarai Renji and Kuchiki Byakuya, who also seriously injure Ichigo. Unbeknownst to they key players, a woman with a black umbrella watches the fight and what comes after from a shadowed alley.)

 

She met him as he was making his way to school from the Urahara Shōten. He was just around the corner from his high school when she called out to him.

“Hey, kid.”

Ichigo turned gingerly, though he seemed to be trying to pass it off as indifference to fit with his image. There stood the Hollow woman, back in her modern disguise.

“Here’s your cake.”

She held out a plain white paper plate, on which was a large slice of what looked like chocolate cake that had been decorated with –

“Are those _Hollow masks_?”

“Yeah, I didn’t have any food colouring. Sorry.”

The dubious look he sent her had no effect on her blank expression. Ichigo took the plate, since it didn’t seem like the Hollow woman would be going anywhere until he did. She then handed him a plastic fork from… somewhere, and then just stood there. Watching him expectantly.

“You’re not gonna leave me alone until I try this, are you?” he asked.

“Turnabout’s fair play.”

When all he did was stare at her, still scowling, she rolled her eyes.

“It’s not poisoned. It’s way too much trouble to find the right amount of such an additive to have the maximum effect without changing the flavour.”

“That’s your reasoning?!”

She continued as if she hadn’t heard him. “Look,” She produced another plastic fork, took a delicate amount that had equal parts icing and cake, and ate it. “See? Delicious.”

With a put-upon sigh, he stabbed the cake right in one of the Hollow masks – was that Grand Fisher’s mask??? – and tasted it. Surprise took the place of his frown.

“Wow, this is –” He took another, bigger bite. “– this is really good!”

Ichigo looked up just in time to catch the smile on her face. He blinked and it was gone, but it had been a much more genuine expression than anything she’d previously made – the difference between a natural expression and one put on for show.

He didn’t comment, just retuned to eating the cake.

Then something occurred to him.

“Hey, this is good and all, but how does eating a dessert stop you from wanting to devour souls?” he said around another mouthful.

Instead of answering, she just waved her hand as though brushing it aside. “Besides that, isn’t it time for you to take your medicine?”

“How do you know about that?!”

But she was already walking away. She gave a half-hearted wave without turning around as she stepped through another small Garganta and was gone.

Ichigo ended up finishing the cake, grumbling about weird people who didn’t answer questions properly. He took one of the pills from the skull-marked bottle that Geta-Bōshi had given him, since the Hollow woman had been right. Just before he entered the school building, he tossed the plate and plastic fork into a trash bin.

The school day was odd. The medicine was amazing; Geta-Bōshi hadn’t been lying when he’d said it would heal him before supper. And nobody seemed to remember Rukia at all. A strange boy sat in her place and spoke to him as if he’d been there the whole time.

After Inoue spurred him on with her confidence in him, Ichigo found new determination to get stronger. To save Rukia.

He met Geta-Bōshi and his three employees, all four of them, outside the Urahara Shōten.

“Oh! Welcome!” said the hat-and-sandal-wearing Urahara. “How are your wounds?”

Ichigo opened his shirt, revealing the faintest scars marking the places where last night had been mortal wounds. “Recovered!” he declared.

The fan stilled in front of Geta-Bōshi’s face for a split second. Then, “That’s good! You followed my instructions, then?”

“Yeah, one pill every hour.”

“You didn’t deviate at all? Anything else out of the ordinary?” He waved the fan lazily, but there was a glint in his eyes from beneath his bucket-hat.

“Well. I met that weird Hollow woman,” Ichigo’s eyes narrowed as Geta-Bōshi stilled again. “Ran into her yesterday walking home from school, and then this morning after I left your shop. She gave me a piece of cake.”

Geta-Bōshi’s fan began waving again, and the man muttered, “Interesting. That must be why…” Then, snapping his fan shut and turning towards the shop, he asked “Did you tell your father?”

“Yeah,” said Ichigo, eying the man suspiciously. “I told him I’d be sleeping over at a friend’s house.”

“It… really sounds like an excuse to do the hanky panky…” The fan was out again as Geta-Bōshi side-eyed him.

“DIE!”

With a _clack!_ the fan closed. “So! Shall we begin?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pardon some of the awkward phrasing. There's a reason this is a collection of WIPs.


	5. Fall Into: Avatar The Last Airbender

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Originally, I was only going to have a really short blurb about how the insert-character got into the world of AtLA, and it got out of hand. I may just start writing the point I really want to get to (i.e. when insert-character meets the gAang) and drop exposition/hints about the hows and wherefores while the story I actually want to tell is happening.

 “‘Come hiking,’ they said. ‘It’ll be fun,’ they said.”

I grunted as I scrabbled against the damp stone for purchase. A thrill of fear and adrenaline coursed through my chest up to my jaw and down to my fingers, constricting my throat and making my skin tingle with sweat.

My voice was breathless and mocking as I continued, “‘It’s good for you to step out of your routine,’ they said.”

After taking a moment to brace myself – these hiking boots were _not_ ideal for rock-climbing – I released my right hand’s grip on the niche in front of my chest and began to reach for the next handhold. The tiny ledge that I was aiming for was the only blemish in the otherwise smooth cave wall between me and the next outcrop. But though it was at the outermost edge of my range, I didn’t have the energy left to admit I’d climbed myself into a dead-end and backtrack to find a different route.

“C’mon,” I muttered encouragingly. “You can do this. It’s not _that_ far.”

It was that far.

I brushed it with the very tip of a finger before my right foot slipped. I didn’t even have time to curse before I lost the other two anchors and fell. Again.

The landing was a solid four out of ten. By which I mean I didn’t break anything or die, or even lose my glasses; I just lost my wind and bruised my back and tailbone.

I spent a minute or so gasping for breath and feeling like I was suffocating, before I recovered enough to comment hoarsely to myself, “I don’t see how this is good for me.”

The cave remained oppressively hushed – not that I expected an answer. Aside from my gasping breaths and the gritty rustle of my clothes against the stone, I couldn’t detect anything else. Not even distant birdsong from the hole I fell through. The only thing that seemed to come through it was light – and distracted idiots who weren’t looking where they were going – which was one of the only silver linings in this ordeal.

 _How long has it been since we were separated?_ I wondered, straightening my glasses on my face. I hadn’t moved from where I’d fallen, still trying to even out my breathing and stop the shaking of my tired limbs. _I hope they escaped the bear… and_ didn’t _end up at the bottom of a hole._

I didn’t have my watch on me, and my phone had been smashed when I first fell through the crevasse, but it had been long enough that I was getting thirsty. I’d tried to climb up to the opening four times now, and four times I had fallen; it was a miracle I wasn’t seriously injured from the first fall alone. In the relative quiet, I closed my eyes and fought back despair. My eyes stung, my nose started running, and my throat closed again, but I didn’t want to let myself cry. No matter how frustrated, scared, and alone I felt, crying would only waste water, tire me out, and lessen my chances of getting home safe.

I couldn’t stop one tear from leaking out, though. It traced a cool line down my cheek.

And caught the faintest breeze.

My eyes opened in surprise. _I couldn’t have imagined that, could I?_ I sniffled, touched the wet trail, felt the barest caress of air on my fingers. It dried quickly, so I mustered up as much spit as I could and licked the back of my hand.

I held my hand up carefully as I got to my feet, trying to find where the breeze was coming from. The movement of air drew me out of the diffuse and weakening light from the hole far above, forcing me to move slowly, feeling my way along with careful sweeps of hands and feet.

The hand I’d licked met rock; the breeze was stronger here. There was also next to no light. Either I’d found a way out, or I’d found a way to get even more lost.

“There’s no way anyone would find me down here,” I told myself aloud, thinking of the first little while I had spent after having fallen, just screaming my throat raw. “So if I want to get home, I’ve got to take the chance.”

It wasn’t a very effective pep talk – I still felt incredibly anxious about… well, everything – but it wasn’t like I had a lot of choices. With a couple of deep, calming breaths, I put my hands on the cave wall and began to follow it – and the breeze – into the darkness.

I walked for an eternity in the stifling, lightless labyrinth. Despite my caution and slow steps, I tripped often on the uneven floor, or smacked my hands or feet on unexpected bulges in the cave wall I was following. The back of my hand dried very fast, it seemed, and it was getting harder to gather enough saliva in my mouth to wet it again. I cursed myself for leaving my water bottle in my friend’s car before the hike. I didn’t have even a single button on my clothes that I could rip off to suck on, and I couldn’t find more than sandy grains on the cave floor in the darkness.

Just as the despair began to creep in and make the impenetrable gloom even heavier, I saw a thin line of light. There was no gradual greying out into white that I could discern; one second I felt like the weight of the world was going to crush me in the pitch black, and the next I had to squint against the sudden brightness.

Hope surged desperately in my chest, stealing my voice. I could make out some of the swells and yaws in the rough stone as shadows against the light, now. This didn’t save me from more bruises, sadly. Being able to see again didn’t take away my exhaustion.

I stumbled toward the mouth of the cave, a delirious sort of joy drawing me into the light, squinting. A dip in the dirt sent me shoulder-first into the wall, adding new bruises to my collection. I remained upright, though, and managed to shove myself off the stone. Unsteady feet carried me out of the cave, and for a moment I closed my eyes against the glare and just relished the open space.

But something was off. My deep, greedy breaths brought strange scents to my nose. When I opened my eyes, I saw plants that had no place in the woods in which I’d gone hiking. The vibrant colours assaulted my eyes after the darkness and grey of the cave. I imagined they grew more intense, more sinister as I stared. Over the fresh pounding of my heart in my ears, I could hear none of the sounds I expected.

I found myself on my rear, the stinging of my tailbone highlighting the suddenness of this change in position. _My knees collapsed_ , I thought numbly. _What’s going on?_ I couldn’t make my brain process what my senses were telling me – no, I didn’t _want_ to understand. I was one step away from breaking in a way to which none of my previous meltdowns compared.

The unexpected sound of crying froze my entire being.

In my stillness, I strained my ears. It sounded like a child crying, muffled in the way I knew from experience meant they were trying to be unheard.

My body was up and moving toward the sound before I realised I’d left the cave behind. It didn’t even occur to me at the time that this could be a Bad Idea™, though on some instinct I kept as quiet as I could. I avoided leaves and branches that might crackle underfoot, stepping toe-heel to soften the sound of my footsteps, and carefully moved tree limbs and brush from my path. It must have been effective, because I managed to approach the source of the crying without alerting them to my presence. Why couldn’t I have had such dexterity in the cave?

A boulder in a small clearing came into view between two weird trees. At first, I couldn’t see who was crying, despite clearly hearing it originating from somewhere beside the big rock. Then something moved.

I gasped softly.

The fox’s ears came forward immediately.

It lifted its eyes – a piercing, pupiless robin’s egg blue – to mine, and I couldn’t have said which of us was more shocked. My gaze was drawn away only because of the startlingly dark red on its sunset-coloured coat. I had a fleeting moment to take in the blood on its foreleg and in the fur on its side.

Then it turned and leaped out of the clearing.

“Wait!” I cried out like a numbskull, and ran after it.

I could only keep up because it was injured. It ran on three legs, and left droplets of bright blood on the green of the alien plant life in its wake. Its wounds didn’t stop it from being as silent as shadow and just as fugitive – but that might have been because my exhaustion caused me to crash around clumsily in my pursuit.

Abruptly, its uninjured front paw slipped, and it crashed to the forest floor on its chest. In the seconds before it regained its footing, I managed to catch up and put an idiot hand on its back.

The world _twisted_. I yelped in harmony with the fox.

I tried to catch myself before I could fall and hurt the wounded creature further. I was half successful: I fell, but I didn’t squash the fox. We ended up rolling twice before a tree trunk halted our progress.

As we struggled to disentangle ourselves – which only seemed to make it worse, really – I realised suddenly that it was as dark as night. And also that this fox was as big as I was.

And it had _more than one tail, what the fjdaskjbgh?!_

“Sorry! I’m sorry, so sorry!” I told it as I finally managed to extricate myself from its many, _many_ tails as gently as I could. Apologising couldn’t hurt, even if it didn’t understand, right?

In response, the fox turned blue eyes on me – _were they_ glowing _?!_ – in what I could only describe as disgust and _sneered_. I am not ashamed to admit that it caused chills to claw up my spine.

It took off again, but didn’t end up getting far.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now that you've read it, if you want to tell me that you think I could skip to the canon events and backstory-drop during that, let me know! Or if you like this as a beginning and want it to stay this way, let me know that, too! I may not go with your suggestion, but I really appreciate hearing about how readers see the story I'm telling; it helps me figure out how to improve.


	6. Fall Into: Dragon Age

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> To be clear, this Dragon Age fic was supposed to begin before the games. Well before. Like, more than 20 years before. Mostly because I wanted the insert-character to be a dragon, and I didn't necessarily want her to just drop into the plot immediately, since most of my characters, like Mad Max, prefer to not be involved with the plot, and I wanted an interesting hook that forced her into it anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one came into being because I could only find a single fanfic in which the insert-character was a dragon (if there are others please let me know!!!), and I couldn't make myself read it because the first 10+ (or more?) chapters seriously needed editing. The author of this fic had a really cool idea, but a lot of people didn't see it and made a lot of unnecessary and hurtful comments on it. The author kept going anyway, and in homage to that perseverance, I wanted to write a story with a dragon and dedicate it to them.

**Attempt 1  
** _If I’m dreaming, I’d really like to wake up. Any time, now._

It had to be a dream, after all. She was floating over a barren, rocky landscape of islets that seemed to drift through a malevolent green-black storm. With the scraggly, dead flora clawing at the angry sky, she was put in mind of King Haggard’s realm, though there was no sea in which to imprison all the unicorns of the world (save one).

A vicious tug behind her breastbone, as if by a great fishhook lodged there, sent her careening through the storm clouds. She tried to gasp for the pain, but found she couldn’t breathe. Clutching at her chest and throat didn’t help, and her heart beat wildly.

That was when she noticed the tether.

There was no better word for it. The cord of white light – so bright it hurt to look at directly for long – extended from her heart out into the seemingly endless dour skies. It throbbed in time with her pulse, sending erratic bead-like variations down the line away from her… and towards whatever was reeling her in.

She had begun to lose consciousness when the end of tether came into view. It terminated abruptly in a tall cliff face, at the centre of an odd-shaped vortex of colours. Before she could gather the will even to scream, she was pulled through.

 

 

 

 **Attempt 2**  
There had been pain, but it was gone now.

Darkness surrounded me, warm and comforting. My eyelids were too heavy to open, but that was alright. Sleep had been calling me back, and I surrendered willingly.

I dreamed of running and chasing, and being chased, and climbing trees. My brothers and I, growing up together, in almost imperceptible increments. My parents, smiling at me with all the love they held for me in their eyes. The people whom I cherished, moving into my life and out, leaving pieces of their hearts with me in the places of the ones they took with them from mine.

I dreamed of the knowledge I was given in my life, and the wisdom I gained as I experienced more. It appeared as mountains of papers covered in writing, some bound into light books, others into weighty tomes, and more that were loose and scattering. Sometimes I filled them with pictures and words of my own, distilled from the chaos of my imagination, passing on as I had been passed on to.

I dreamed of hurtling high above a vast landscape, spread out below me in unending beauty. My kin filled the air alongside me, and their voices raised in exultation prompted me to lift my own to join them. There was music in each of them, in the land below, in me. It was in constant flux, but it was always there, always free.

Then the song changed. Discord erupted from one of the places thick with songs, tones clashing against each other. It spread rapidly, like ink through water, and following behind it came sudden stretches of silence as uncountable voices were cut off.

A cry rose up in my heart, desolate, plaintive.

A cry surged through my throat and past my tongue, piercing, bestial.

I startled awake.

 

  

 

 **Attempt 3**  
The little blond boy loved to play in the forest beyond the village walls when his chores were done for the morning. There was a meadow some ways into the trees, in which a large, strangely-shaped rock outcrop sat, and he liked to pretend it was a sleeping dragon. From the time he discovered it, the first warm day of Cloudreach, it became his only refuge. It was here that he fled when he first learned he could use magic. It was here that he met his best friend.

Almost a year after his initial foray into the meadow, and four months after he lit the hearth fire without using flint and steel, the blond boy was once again playing by the rock. He felt safe from discovery here, since the other children in the village wouldn’t go past the gates despite all his coaxing, and he had never seen the adults come to his meadow. He wanted to see if he could use magic intentionally, and decided to try recreating what he’d been doing when he first used it.

He had gathered a small pile of twigs by the rock and was attempting to set them alight with magic, when the earth shook.

 _The rock moved_.

The boy gave a shriek. He tried to get to his feet to run away, but the ground heaved and threw him down. The rock rose above him, like some enormous creature getting to its feet. In fact, that was exactly what was happening.

Breaking free from under the ground, its legs unfolded. On one end, a tail like a tree trunk broke free of the earth. On the other, a long, serpentine neck uncurled from against its body, enormous horns arching back from its craggy head. Wings like sails of ships from merchants’ stories unfurled and extended to their fullest, and dirt rained down on the blond boy beneath them. Standing at its full height, the dragon was much, much bigger than it had seemed when it was just a rock outcrop jutting out of the ground.

Mute and frozen with terror, the boy could only watch as the dragon turned its huge, gold eyes on him. He saw his death in those eyes. The death of his village.

The dragon lowered its great head towards him. Its maw opened, revealing teeth as long and sharp as daggers. The boy closed his eyes as its hot, rank breath washed over him. It was going to eat him in one gulp!

But those terrible jaws didn’t close around the boy. The great head snaked around him, and, hooking a single tooth into the back of his shirt, the dragon lifted the boy into the air. Using the tip of its tail, it steadied him, and set him on his feet.

_[Split possibility]_

_Option 1_

And then it turned in the opposite direction from his village and started to walk away.

The tremors its footsteps sent through the earth nearly knocked him flat again. His uncomprehending disbelief rooted him to the spot until the dragon was nearly out of sight amongst the trees. He should have been running back to his village to warn the adults. He _should_ have been dribbling down his legs in terror. Instead, the blond boy found himself running after the dragon.

“Wait!” he shouted.

_Option 2_

The boy stumbled back against the dragon’s tail, craning his neck to look up as its head turned so it could fix on him one large, gold eye.

It opened its mouth again – but this time, it only barely parted its jaws. And then, impossibly, it spoke.

“ _Well met_ ,” said the dragon. Its voice was equivalent to a loud whisper, and its mouth didn’t move the way a person’s would to form the words.

“Wh-what,” was all the boy could get out.

_Option 3 [I Like This One Best]_

The boy stumbled back against the dragon’s tail, craning his neck to look up as its head angled down to fix one enormous eye on him.

And then it turned away from him

  * Dragon leaves without speaking, but comes back and rescues boy from bear?



**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, I'm not sure if I want to write it in first person or third. I think the 3rd attempt might actually be what I go with, if I manage to make myself keep writing this fic. But the first two tries might find a place in it somewhere.


	7. Fall Into: Final Fantasy X

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I started this one not too long after I began posting Fulcrum Effect's chapters, which makes it my second oldest self-insert fanfic (and third oldest fanfic in general). Final Fantasy X was the first game I ever personally owned, and as such, it has a very special place in my heart. Which might explain why I dreamed of it a couple of times. Specifically of a fantastical city, and running through it with a rambunctious blond boy, getting into trouble. It was easy to begin writing since I already had the premise.

 

_The transparent sphere, not quite as large as a fist, began to glow with a strange inner light. Within its liquid depths, an image coalesced: a girl with dark hair, wearing a cloak and sitting cross-legged on bare earth, backlit by the flickering of a fire somewhere behind her._

_“How do you even use – ah! Is it on?” Black filled the sphere as her hand obscured the image for a moment. She cursed as she removed her hand, and called over her shoulder, “You better not be sneaking up on me to eavesdrop, Rikku!”_

_She paused, seeming to listen for something, but the sphere did not to pick up any noise. With a sigh, the girl turned back to the sphere. Her eyes glinted in the light of the stars filling the night sky, but her features were hard to distinguish in the relative darkness._

_“I guess I should start,” she muttered under her breath. “Why the heck am I doing this? It's not like anyone will watch it._ I'm _not the hero of this story,” She grumbled incoherently for a little longer, then sighed. “The beginning is too hard. But I'll start with what's relevant right now...”_

 

* * *

 

It was one of those vivid dreams, the ones that made her wish she could capture them somehow to view again when she was awake – like in that movie where the ghosts from another world preyed on the living until they were finally purified. Even the scary dreams were beautiful in some way; spellbinding, fascinating, drawing her mind back to them as she went about her day. She had never managed to bring them to life in the waking world, though, always dissatisfied by her clumsy attempts with pen and pencil and brush.

Not that it mattered. At least, not anymore.

All around her, throngs of people moved through neon-lit streets. Despite the blackness of the sky above, the city was as bright as day, and the people moved through it like blood through a beating heart. It made her think of the descriptions she'd read of many major cities, each claiming to be “the city that never sleeps.” The woman allowed herself to be moved along by the flow of traffic.

She was at once grateful and frustrated that she seemed to be dreaming lucidly. This was going to be her last dream, after all, and while it was nice that she could exert some control over it, she could have done without being able to remember the rest of the world. It would have been nice to slip away while she floated passively through a dream as enthralling as this.

The woman let go of the maudlin thought and looked around wonderingly, a small smile on her face as she absorbed the hectic night life. It was loud, and vibrant, and _alive_ , and that was what she wanted most of all right now.

Something niggled at the back of her mind, though. There was something about the glaring neon signs, which used characters she didn't recognise (reminding her of nothing so much as photos she'd seen of Tokyo and Hong Kong); something about the eclectic mix of architecture (domed buildings, skyscrapers, and modern monsters of distinctly historic East Asian inspiration); about the fantastical water features that arched into the sky overhead and in the distance. Familiarity and confusion derailed her enjoyment.

Had she dreamed this dream before? Or was this a new dream, and just the feeling of _déjà vu_ that was plaguing her now? She had experienced both, but had never been able to determine one from the other during the dream.

She stepped out of the streaming crowd at a rounded bend that collected eddies of small groups of idling, talking people, simply standing for a moment. And frowned. _I can't understand what they're saying_. That had never happened before in her dreams. Either she dreamed that nobody spoke, or she dreamed any communication in English. From the little she could make out, it sounded like it could have been an East Asian language, but it didn't sound like Japanese, or what she could recall Mandarin or Cantonese sounding like.

A glance at the people nearest made the breath catch in her throat. For a second, it seemed like they blurred out at the edges. She blinked, and the moment passed. _What the heck?_ No matter how often she blinked and glanced around, though, the strange haze did not return. But the woman was distracted from any further investigation when she noticed the weird clothes they all wore.

 _What is with this style?_ Everyone she saw seemed to be following the trend, too, so mass cosplay struck her as unlikely. _All the belts and zippers, the weird accessories, the amount of skin they show in such awkward places. And the hair! It's like everyone decided to take fashion advice from a JRPG._

The woman leaned back against a lamp post, running a hand over her face. Went rigid as she got a good look at her hand. Which, despite feeling solid to her, appeared to be made of fog.

“What the _fuck_?!” She couldn't help the exclamation, but nobody seemed to care. Or perhaps they couldn't hear her. That was more likely, since a quick glance at herself confirmed that it wasn't just her hand that was so indistinct.

She didn't _just_ appeared to be made of fog, either. While she did have the vague shape of a person, there was nothing about her that indicated what she looked like; there were no colours; there was no clear shape to her body; there was no _shadow_ at her feet. It was as if someone had taken a cloud and formed it into the most simplified idea of a person, and the cloud had been unable to keep even that much detail, beginning to dissipate around the edges.

“What's happening to me?” Even though she felt solid (maybe? Running her hands over her arms and torso was weird, as if she _did_ feel something, but her mind couldn't decipher what her nerves were telling her), she noticed that whatever made up her body was continuing to fade right in front of her eyes. The woman put her hands on her face, and found she could see through them. A strangled whimper left her.

“-------?” asked a quiet voice. There was a child speaking to her. _He can see me?_ She couldn't see his eyes under his dark blue hood, even though the fog that made up her hands was so thin as to be transparent, but he looked... familiar...

Smaller hands took hers, drawing them away from her face. Under his fingers, the fog came together, gained colour, and detail, and _solidity_. It was only what he touched that took the proper shape and appearance, but at least the rest of her stopped disappearing. She nearly cried, then wondered why she was so reluctant (or perhaps even scared) about fading away. This was a dream, albeit her last one, and wouldn't fading away only mean waking up? (Shouldn't even this much be enough for her to be able to face tomorrow?)

“-------,” said the boy, smiling. He let go of one of her hands (she managed to stop herself from whimpering and reaching for him) and touched his chest, around where his heart would be. With a grasping motion, he pulled his hand away – and something _glowed_ in his fist. Whatever it was, it also made a faint noise, like a thousand quiet sighs cascading over each other. He offered it to her, and she took it almost reflexively.

The second it touched the foggy outline of her hand, warmth spread through her like a wave. The fog congealed, following the warmth in ripples, and then she was completely solid.

The woman had a shocked moment to look down at herself – to take in the dark combat boots, the needlessly-belted-all-over black pants that left her frightfully pale shins bare, the sleeveless blue shirt that zipped up the front, the long, dark hair that fell past her waist – and let out a squawk, before the boy's hand on hers tightened.

“Good, it worked,” he said (and it _wasn't_ in English, she knew it wasn't, but she could understand it). “Come on!”

Then he was dragging her along behind him, right back into the crowded street, and it was all she could do to keep up with him.

“Hey!” she protested when he pulled her around a sharp turn (she tried not to think about it, but she also wasn't speaking English). “What – who – !”

He stopped suddenly (she ran into his back, but despite being a good few inches shorter than her, he didn't move; it was as if he was made of stone). They stood behind a much denser crowd clogging the wide entry to what seemed to be some sort of stadium.

“Oh dear. Too late for that, then,” And he was off again, leading her away from the spotlit building, back the way they'd come.

She saw the twin statues flanking the stadium's huge arched door in a glance over her shoulder and her blood ran cold. She looked forward at the back of the boy who still held her hand, his dusky skin contrasting sharply with her paleness. At the gold wheel emblazoned on his sleeveless hooded shirt.

“Bahamut,” she managed to choke out.

The fayth looked back at her. Grinned.

“Im _poss_ ible!” She yanked her hand out of his grasp.

He stopped and turned back to her. “There's not much time. We need to go.”

“ _We_?” the woman cried, hands on her head, tangling fingers in her hair ( _too long, it's supposed to be shoulder-length_ ). “You don't need _me_! I'm not –” Her throat closed. She coughed to clear it. “ _I'm not part of this story_!”

He reached for her, and she flinched. Her eyes caught the reflection in the window of the store they'd stopped by. She felt as if her heart turned to ice.

A girl – a _child_ – wearing black pants and a zippered blue shirt stared back at her from the window, red birthmarks stark against the white of her cheek and chin, eyes so wide they bulged almost comically from behind her round glasses. The fayth approached her again, and the reflection of him in the window neared the terrified girl.

“What have you done to me?” she asked woodenly, watching her absurd reflection's lips move.

Instead of answering directly, the fayth said, “We needed your help,” He took her hand from her hair ( _no wonder he didn't seem as short as he should have_ ) _._ She didn't resist as he began to lead her away again, if at a slower pace. The crowds of people flowed around them, and several strange vehicles swept by as well (the niggling was back at the sight of those).

“Why me?”

“You know why.”

“No – why _me_?”

“You've been here before,” the boy told her. She almost tripped. He looked back at her over his shoulder and grinned again. “We thought _that_ was impossible. Someone from another world, finding our dream through her own. And you knew us,” Shock made her shoulders tense. He gave her rigid hand a squeeze, apparently trying to be comforting. “So when you returned to your own dreams, we followed. We saw your game, the pain in the story it told, our possible future, and how much it meant to you. We decided that we had an opportunity your game's version of us didn't, so we tried to draw you back. It took a long time.”

She balked at his words. She felt numb, knew it as part of the dissociation her mind used to protect itself, and allowed it to distance her from the struggle of trying to figure out what to believe. It was a temporary solution, and a flimsy one, but she could do no better for now.

“And this?” she asked weakly, gesturing at herself when he glanced at her. “Why do I look like I did when I was sixteen?”

“That's not our fault, actually,” The fayth gave her hand another squeeze. “When someone dreams, they often take the appearance of their internal image, the way they think of themselves.”

She grimaced. “So this is how I see myself?” she muttered under her breath, then cursed.

The boy chuckled lightly. “As for your first question, all we've done is stabilise you. We gave you some of our pyrflies, so that you could remain here and so you could understand us.”

“'Remain here'?” A sense of foreboding closed like a fist around her heart.

“You knew you were dying,” He turned his hooded face to watch her nod mutely. “It came more quickly than you expected. We managed to draw you back, but we were almost too late.”

“What do you mean?” she demanded, angry (afraid).

“You cannot go back to your world,” he replied gently. “Your body there is dead, you are no longer connected; this dream is all that you have now.”

She staggered to a halt, emotions (hysteria, regret, grief) swelling in her chest against the numbness.

He stopped walking and turned, watching her. Waiting.

“Why?” she asked finally, a beseeching note in her quavering voice. Then, accusingly, “Why did you save me? I wanted – I was _ready_ to die.”

“We need you,” he told her. “Will you help us?”

“You don't need me!” Her vision blurred. She was crying? Angrily, she dashed the tears away. “You saw my game. Everything worked out in the end! You don't need me!” ( _Nobody needs me!_ )

“Yes, we do,” he insisted, and his voice took on a strange quality, as if many people were talking through him at once. “Your game doesn't tell the only story that is possible.”

Her mouth shut with a _click_ of teeth, and she felt lightheaded.

“Even if we changed nothing,” he – _they_ continued, “there is no guarantee that it will all occur as you believe it will. Life is not a game, or a story.”

“What do you want from me?” she rasped after a long pause, tears streaming down numb cheeks.

“Go with them. Support them.”

“I can't possibly keep up with them! I'm the worst possible choice for this – I can't even fight! I'll only be a burden!”

Another mild chuckle. “Oh, _that_ won't be a problem.”

Screams filled the air, cutting off anything further.

The crowds surged towards them, passed at dead runs, and fled on down the street. One of the weird vehicles flew by, and several people had to throw themselves out of the way. She would have been swept away if the fayth hadn't tugged her over to the edge, into the lee of a lamp post. Abruptly, she recognised where they were: the bridge-like road high over the water, somewhere along which Tidus met Bahamut's fayth again before...

Fear rose up in her throat with her heartbeat and choked her. Adrenaline burned in her chest, tingled in her fingers and calves. She glanced around, wild-eyed; ahead of them in the distance, an immense globe of water eclipsed the sky and the buildings _bent_ towards it ( _that_ was Sin?!); _things_ shot out of it, off into the city (Sinspawn, _oh shitshitshit_ ); people screamed around her, she was sure, but all she could hear was ringing and the panicked _thumpthump_ of her own heart.

“Hey, look at me,” The fayth's voice was clear in the sudden silence, and she realised the world around them was still (and boy, wasn't that _also_ familiar). “There's no time to explain everything. But we know you can figure it out.”

She found her voice. “What the hell does _that_ mean?”

“You are a dream – your _own_ dream, touched by the fayth,” He touched his chest over his heart again, and the pyrflies that made up his body glowed and sang (and, disturbingly, something inside her responded in kind). “An alien soul expressed by the life of this world, and anchored here by other souls who call it Home.”

“Stop talking in riddles!” she snapped.

Infuriatingly, he grinned. “All the fayth are connected. And all the summoners, too.”

Her vision blurred, like water over glass. The screams returned; the world was moving again. She glanced around with wide eyes, but he was gone.

She swore (in English, some part of her noticed) and started looking for some indication of where she was. Unfortunately, for all her attempts to focus, nothing jumped out to politely enlighten her.

The impact of a score of Sinscales on the road _did_ jump out, and rather rudely.

Fresh screams started up as several of the fiends unfolded and wrenched themselves out of the pockmarked road. People ran heedlessly, knocking into each other, falling, trampling. For all that there were those who fled mindlessly, though, there were others who stopped long enough to drag the fallen to their feet before continuing to run. The stampede left no-one behind but the wom- the girl.

As the Sinscales that had unfolded skittered after the fleeing crowd, she decided she shouldn't stick around. No need to test the theory that these fiends ran on the basic instinct to attack whatever moved.

But that meant she had to make a decision: follow the fleeing crowd and likely run into Auron and Tidus; or run in the general direction of _Sin_ and hope to meet them on the way. Neither option had much appeal, but the only other thing she could think of was to fling herself off the road entirely, and she didn't want to imagine what fiends might have dropped from Sin into the waters below.

She hesitated for too long.

A newly-awakened Sinscale charged her, its wingtips pointed together in a spear-like strike. The girl barely managed to dodge, too stunned to even cry out. The fiend crashed into the barrier wall, its wingtips momentarily buried. Her body moved on subconscious commands (and she'd worry about the _how the fuck_ later).

“HAH!” the girl yelled as she brought the heel of a combat boot down on the fiend's glowing eyes (she assumed they were eyes) in an axe kick.

_CRACK!_

_SCREECH!_

The Sinscale's carapace cracked satisfyingly beneath her foot. It collapsed, its surface taking on a glossy translucence before dissolving into pyrflies.

Pyrflies that her body _absorbed_.

She staggered back in surprise. It was nothing like the warmth that the fayth's pyrflies had brought; this felt cold, fingers of ice dragging across her skin and melting into her heart. The girl pressed her hands to her chest and tried to remember how to breathe.

There was no further time to process. More and more Sinscales were waking up and turning their eerie glowing eyes on her. They moved like earwigs ( _ugh!_ ), quickly surrounding her. Fleeing was no longer an option.

Before they could advance on her, something caught their attention. She heard a gravelly voice.

“Cut the ones that matter, and run!”

Red flashed in the edge of her vision. She made the mistake of taking her eyes off the Sinscales in front of her to look over. One of them was apparently smart (or lucky) enough to take advantage of that. It charged her, wingtips first.

She made a startled attempt to dodge, and fell on her tailbone. Thankfully, the Sinscale was put off balance by this and missed her.

With a growl, she lashed out with her feet at the legs of the nearest Sinscales. Two stumbled and went down, allowing her to get up and break them. The cold tickled across her skin and filled her again. She wondered how they could be so weak (she dared not believe she might be strong).

Another Sinscale chittered, eyes glowing and wings flickering, but before it could attack, a red sword sliced its head off. The wielder of the red sword then turned to her, and Tidus choked on whatever he'd been about to say.

“Vin?!”

( _How does he know that name?_ ) She covered her own shock by smashing her fist (and bruising it) into the side of the Sinscale that rushed Tidus while he was distracted. More took its place.

Then Auron was there, red coat billowing as he cut through the Sinscales. “Don't stop!” he called.

Tidus grabbed her wrist before she could follow on her own and took off at a run.

“Hey!” she cried, feeling like a broken record ( _Seriously, what is it with these people and dragging me?_ ).

“You're not disappearing on me this time!” said Tidus, slashing a Sinscale that got in their way.

They followed Auron up the slope of the road and scrambled over the break, killing or knocking back the Sinscales that came at them. Before they reached the top, the road shook with a great impact, one much larger than the Sinscales made. She watched Tidus glance at Auron (who ignored it), then met his eyes when he looked at her.

As they crested the rise, the huge mollusc-like Sinspawn came into view. Auron continued forward, but Tidus paused. He turned to the girl, then raised her hand between them, still gripping her wrist.

“If I let you go, promise you'll stay right beside me,” he said, pointing down at their feet with his free hand.

Her brows furrowed in confusion. “I promise.”

The shocked expression came back to his face as his grip loosened, but there was no time to figure it out. She grabbed his hand ( _Why is_ this _so familiar?_ ) and dragged him after Auron.

The big katana swung down through a Sinscale as they came up beside him. The girl let go of Tidus' hand and launched a roundhouse kick at another. Then they were in front of it, and the towering Sinspawn cast its magic.

She felt like the globe of darkness and purple light was crushing her. She stumbled, and saw Tidus almost fall to one knee. It passed as soon as the spell terminated.

“Get outta my town!” growled Tidus, cutting into the body of the Sinspawn. Pyrflies sang as they were released, and some of them flowed into Tidus.

“Some can't _wait_ to die!” Auron punctuated his words with a great swing of his sword, clearing a small area of Sinscales. His eyes flashed behind his sunglasses as he absorbed the pyrflies. Switching his grip on his sword, he leapt up (higher than she thought possible) and the blade of his katana glowed. He used the momentum of the jump to stab his sword into the road. The glow entered the pavement, then exploded upwards beneath the Sinscales and Sinspawn. Pyrflies sang eerily as they dispersed.

In the brief reprieve, the girl saw Tidus' eyes flash, too. He steadied himself, then ran and threw himself into the air in a series of twisting flips. The long cut he made on the Sinspawn's hide spewed more singing lights.

The Sinspawn made no noise, but its tentacles flailed. It cast the spell again, and this time she saw even Auron stagger.

When she regained her balance, the girl aimed a skipping side kick at one of the creature's wounds, yelling, “EYAH!”

As she retreated, Auron followed up with another huge slash, which Tidus emulated. They were able to hit it twice more before the few tentacles it had left convulsed in the shape of its spell. Sinscales began to wake as the three of them tried to recover.

She was angry (and hurting, and frustrated, and grieving). The emotions welled up, and the cold feeling like the pyrflies' touch grew in her chest. She straightened up, breathed deep, and charged. Steps away from the Sinspawn's bulk, she thrust her hands forward, fingertips pointed together like the Sinscales' wing-spear attack (and if she'd been paying attention, she would have seen a glow surround her arms in the outline of a Sinscale's wings). Her spear hands strike drove deep into one of the cuts in the monster's flank.

With a piercing screech, the Sinspawn split open, clouds of pyrflies singing as they scattered. The Sinspawn's flesh took on a weird gloss, its hide becoming translucent to reveal an interior that was dark without the pyrflies' glow. Whatever had compelled her left along with the pyrflies. She tried to step back.

But she was stuck.

“Uh. Little help?” She glanced over her shoulder.

Auron gestured with one hand. Tidus approached her almost warily. He took hold of her forearms where they emerged from the Sinspawn's hide, braced a foot against it, and pulled gently. They staggered back as she came unstuck.

“Thanks, Tidus,” she said (cursed herself as the name slipped out) as they jogged to catch up with Auron.

“It _is_ you!” he exclaimed. He grabbed her hand again. “You don't look much different from when we were little. But we couldn't understand each other then, so I thought...” He grimaced.

“You thought you had the wrong person,” she finished (and the confusion was back in full force).

Tidus nodded. They slowed to a power walk. “We didn't speak the same language, and all we knew was each other's names. But you're the only one who's ever said it 'Tie-dus'. Even after I corrected you a million times.”

Ahead, Auron had paused, apparently waiting for them. Tidus stopped, so she turned to face him, to tell him not to dawdle. It came out as an indignant squawk instead when he pulled her into a crushing hug.

“Don't ever disappear on me again!” he whispered, voice thick with emotion.

She froze in place for a solid couple seconds, completely rigid. Then (with an increasingly disturbing sense of familiarity) she jabbed her fingers into his sides. He jerked away with a yelp ( _He's still ticklish there – wait,_ still?! _What the fuck?!_ ), then rubbed the back of his head sheepishly.

“Sorry. Forgot about your no-touchy thing,” He continued in a marvelling sort of voice, “It really is you.”

“I – I don't –” She didn't know what she was trying to say, but couldn't make the words come even if she did.

Tidus didn't seem to mind (or notice). He'd caught sight of the billboard with his father's face on the side of the building and was glaring at it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the first draft, I used the Spiran alphabet to write what Bahamut says. Sadly, it doesn't appear as Spiran script when I transfer it to other formats...


End file.
